1983: Milton Rogovin
Milton Rogovin was born in 1909. He was schooled as an optometrist and photographed poor and working people for fifty years. His series ranged from storefront churches, miners, steel workers, Chile, the Yemeni and Native American communities and a three-decade documentation of a community in Buffalo, N.Y. He photographed the people he considered “the forgotten ones.”
His award from the W. Eugene Smith Fund allowed him to complete his expansive Family of Miners series. Rogovin’s initial work took him to Appalachia, where he photographed the devastated landscape, mine communities and women miners at work and at home. With his wife and collaborator, Anne Rogovin, they photographed in ten nations including China, Zimbabwe, Scotland, Cuba and France.
Rogovin’s correspondence, negatives and contact sheets are at the Library of Congress and the master collection of photographs resides at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson.
His latest and most comprehensive book is Milton Rogovin: the Making of a Social Documentary Photographer. The J. Paul Getty Museum published the book, Milton Rogovin: the Mining Photographs. In 2007 he was awarded the Cornell Capa Award from the International Center of Photography.
Milton Rogovin passed away on January 18th of 2011 at age 101.
